My high school had a decent art department, but I only got to take one art class the whole time I was there. When I was 16 years old, my parents enrolled me in a portfolio class at a local art center. This class totally blew up my idea of what it meant to be an artist and I ended up changing my career path to art.

I completed my BFA in Painting, and I use both canvas painting and body painting performances to explore camouflage and identity. I paint with acrylic paint because I appreciate its ease, control, versatility, and because it translates easily from canvas to skin.”

Video Transcript“Hi! I’m Lauryn and I’m a painter and a performance artist. When I was in high school and I was putting together my schedule, I wanted to put in some art courses. And my advisor said that I would be more valuable as a woman engineer than a woman artist, and I was kind of like, ‘Screw that!’

When I was 18, my parents and I decided to put together an art rave for my birthday, so we put paper all along the walls in this garage area and black fabric and we have these huge gallons of paint everywhere. And we had, like, I think 60 people come in. They were all wearing these blank t-shirts, white and black t-shirts. We had a band playing, we had music playing, and everyone just, you know, stuck their hands in the paint or, like, got weird things for brushes, and like, painted the entire room.

It was an incredible experience. It was one of the most memorable experiences I have. Right then and there I knew that I needed to be an artist. I couldn’t do this engineering thing.

When I was TA-ing in college, my friend and I had this dream that we would put together the free school where anyone from anywhere could take a class and something and be able to do that without having financial or geographic obstacles. And so years later when I was asked to be a part of ART PROF I jumped on that, because that was exactly what we were talking about several years ago.”